1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to telecommunications services. More particularly, the present invention relates to capabilities that augment the user experience surrounding, and otherwise enhance the value and usefulness of, various wireless messaging paradigms including, inter alia, Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS).
2. Background of the Invention
As the ‘wireless revolution’ continues to march forward the ability of a Service User (SU), for example a user of a wireless device such as a cellular telephone, to manage or control, within a truly ubiquitous cross-carrier environment, the messaging activity with which they wish to participate has grown increasingly more challenging and, as a consequence, substantially in importance.
The present invention, a Subscription Manager (SM) capability, facilitates aspects of such management or control. A SM may operate within a centrally-located, full-featured Messaging Inter-Carrier Vendor (MICV) facility. Alternatively, a SM may operate within the environment of a Wireless Carrier (WC), or within the environment of a Service Provider (SP), or within the environment of some other entity. While the discussion below will center on a MICV-based SM it will be readily apparent to one of ordinary skill in the relevant art that other placements are equally applicable and indeed are fully within the scope of the present invention.
A SM allows a SU to efficiently engage in activities or exchanges (including, possibly among other things, the acquisition of information, the receipt of services, the purchase of products, etc.) with one or more SPs by addressing various of the structural impediments that naturally arise under such a model. Various of the structural impediments include:
1) Limited Resources. A SP may employ a Short Code (SC) as the address to which it would ask users of its service to direct their request messages. While the abbreviated length of a SC (e.g., five digits for a SC administered by Neustar under the Common Short Code [CSC] program) incrementally enhances the experience of a SU (e.g., the SU need remember and enter only a few digits as the destination address of their request message) it also, by definition, constrains the universe of available SCs thereby causing each individual SC to be a limited or scarce resource. A description of a common (i.e., universal) short code environment may be found in pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/742,764 entitled “UNIVERSAL SHORT CODE ADMINISTRATION FACILITY.”
2) Spam. Under normal circumstances unsolicited or undesired messages may be a nuisance to a SU. If those messages also entail a WC per-message delivery charge then they can become significantly more than just an annoyance.
3) Opt-In/Opt-Out. The procedures surrounding the, in some cases legally-mandated, ability of a SU to opt-in and/or opt-out of, for example, an SP's offering through a single/double/etc.-step process.
4) Billing. The need to flexibly and dynamically perform a range of billing activities (including, possibly among other things, tasks such as price determination, billing transaction, etc.) represent a substantial challenge.